


Choose this heart with its safety catch

by lepidopteran



Series: May 1968 AU [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: M/M, bahorel is a situationist (or at least an enragé), jehan is a pretty boy but not a good boy, may 1968 au, pre-slash i guess, warning for detailed description of an anxiety attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 18:32:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/726480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lepidopteran/pseuds/lepidopteran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little more of that May 1968 AU, god help me</p><p>Jehan has an anxiety attack and Bahorel shows up with a book of André Breton's poems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choose this heart with its safety catch

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place around January or February 1968, a few months before "Sous les pavés, la plage."

 

Every so often, in the middle of an average day, Jehan discovered he couldn't breathe.  
  
It came over him slowly at first, a tension at the top of his spine which closed steadily tighter, like a chokehold. Then his jaw locked and he heard his breath in pathetic gasps, as if from far away, as if through a tunnel.  
  
The heaving grey bulk of Nanterre University closed in around him. Jehan edged towards the wall and shut his eyes.  
  
One thought beat an unsteady pulse at his temples: _There is no place for you here._  
  
 _There is no space in the modern world for a Jehan, Jean Prouvaire._  
  
Dizziness came in a wave, and he slumped onto a bench, clutching his head. The concrete felt cool against the backs of his thighs, and on his shoulder blades through his thin t-shirt, and he let his breathing relax into that feeling.  
  
He kept his eyes closed until he heard a voice.  
  
“You dropped these.”  
  
Jehan cracked his eyes open. An amiable bulk of a man swam into view above him, extending one large hand, holding Jehan's glasses.  
  
“Thanks,” he said. His chest still felt raw, and his voice came out in awkward jolts. “I didn't notice.” He shoved his glasses onto his nose. Past the brand new hairline crack wandering across the left lens, Jehan recognized Bahorel, who liked to joke too loudly in lectures (when he showed up at all).  
  
“You must have been pretty distracted,” said Bahorel. “Prouvaire skipping class? Unthinkable!”  
  
“Is it really?” Jehan grimaced. “Sure, I'm not a loafer like you, but I'm not some kind of – good boy.”  
  
“A loafer?” Bahorel said. He didn't seem hurt or defensive, but curious.  
  
“I didn't mean anything by it. But you're skipping the same lecture as I am, and somehow I'm not surprised.”  
  
“Loafer I am, then,” said Bahorel. “And you, Jean Prouvaire – pretty boy, yes, but good boy, no.”

“It's Jehan.”  
  
“Sorry?”  
  
“I go by Jehan,” he said. “In the Medieval style. You know – Jehan de Lescurel. Jehan Bodel. _Hom, qui creature es resnable, de bien et de mal entendable_.”  
  
“Poetic boy Jehan, pretty boy Jehan – but not good boy Jean Prouvaire.” said Bahorel. His laugh burst at the seams with _j_ _oie de vivre_ , and Jehan felt the tightness in his lungs start to uncoil.  
  
Bahorel took a seat on the bench, and put up his feet. The scuffed leather toes of his boots bumped against Jehan's knee. “As it happens, I was just loafing around the library.” He produced a book from his bag, and passed it to Jehan.  
  
Jehan flipped through the volume. “Breton? I can dig it.”

“Check this one out,” Bahorel took the book and licked his thumb, shuffling through until he found the right page, then passed it back.  
  
“ _Plutôt La Vie_...” Jehan read. “Choose life.”

Bahorel reached over and ghosted his broad hand across the page, pointing out a line. “ _La vie de la présence rien que de la présence_ ,” he said.  
  
Jehan only realized he was staring when Bahorel leaned in and tapped on the frame of his glasses.  
  
“You'll want to get that lens replaced,” said Bahorel.  
  
“I know,” said Jehan.  
  
“Do you ever take off your glasses and walk around, look at the world, let those eyeballs fend for themselves?”  
  
“Sometimes,” said Jehan. “I always take them off when I'm writing. And sometimes, if I wear them for too long, I get anxious. Everything is so sharp, it starts to seem artificial.”  
  
“Choose life instead of those prisms, with no depth even if their colors are purer,” said Bahorel, and it took Jehan a minute to realize that he was again quoting the poem.  
  
“You said you write,” said Bahorel. “Poetry?”  
  
“Sure, yeah,” said Jehan. He took stock of this different kind of pressure in his chest, an unfamiliar new jitter of nerves that somehow didn't bring on the spectre of panic.  
  
“Maybe you could read me a verse some time.” Bahorel wasn't quite smiling with his mouth, but the corners of his eyes crinkled up with such naked mirth that Jehan hesitated, afraid he might be the butt of this loafer's joke. He was still leaning in, folded to fit on the bench with his knees pulled up to his broad chest, and his hand still holding the volume of Breton open on Jehan's lap.  
  
“Oh,” Jehan stammered. “My poems, they're not for other people. They're very silly.”  
  
Bahorel shrugged and leaned back. A little pang of disappointment skittered across Jehan's chest, and the covers of the book fell shut.  
  
But Bahorel's hands went to the bag at his hip again and shuffled through it. He pulled out a can of paint, shook it up, and passed it to Jehan. “Write me something, poet.”  
  
“What, here?” said Jehan, clutching the spray paint, eyes wide.  
  
“Look around at these grey walls,” said Bahorel. “The concrete could use a little poetry.”  
  
Jehan unfolded himself from the bench and removed his glasses, handing them to Bahorel who held them so gingerly in his large hands, as if he were holding the delicate body of a bird.  
  
Jehan took a step back and stared at the wall for a long moment, the paint can raised and ready, but only one phrase resounded through his head.  
  
On the oppressive concrete wall above Bahorel's blurred figure, he scrawled _Plutôt La Vie_.

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by this photograph of Nanterre in 1968: http://1968andallthat.net/files/images/plutot%20la%20vie.jpg
> 
> as well as this excerpt from a Situationist International communique written just after the May 1968 protests (http://libcom.org/library/enrag%C3%A9s-situationists-occupations-movement): "They began a systematic assault on the unbearable order of things, beginning with the university. The environment was particularly revolting. Nanterre was modern in its faculty appointments, exactly as it was modern in its architecture ... The scene was perfect: the urbanism of isolation had grafted a university center onto the high-rise flats and their complementary slums. It was a microcosm of the general conditions of oppression, the spirit of a world without spirit. Thus the program preventing the specialists of illusion from speaking ex-cathedra and the use of the walls for critical vandalism were to have great effect."
> 
> gosh I love situationists. 
> 
> the title is also from the poem Bahorel shows Jehan, Plutôt La Vie by André Breton.  
> you can find the original French here: http://literaturafrancesatraducciones.blogspot.com/2011/01/dos-poemas-de-andre-breton.html  
> and the translation I used is in here, titled "Choose Life": http://kboo.fm/sites/default/files/19+1_SHORT_BRETON_WRITINGS.pdf


End file.
